Tuesday 21 May, 2013
THERE ARE AT least 250,000 words in the English language and yet, frustratingly, we still have problems articulating ourselves from time to time.
Everyday life would be a little less smooth without the words like pyjamas (thanks, India), ketchup (cheers,China) or breeze (ditto, Portugal) – but what about the words we haven’t adopted yet?
Here are just seven we should probably consider nabbing from other lanuages…
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I am a gattara.. Not by choice though they keep multiplying!!
Very embiggening of the journal to post this. The verosity of this whopportunity shall be celebrated in an imbibulent way with a cup of tea.
250,000? That’s like saying there’s at least 5 words in the English language. It’s true, but you’re miles off…
Hi Aubrey,
I see your point. The problem is that, because English is a living language (and a global language), it’s pretty hard to reach a definitive word count – and that’s even before you try to determine what exactly counts as a “word”. (Do you count inflections, slang, abbreviations, obsolete words or multiple meanings for the same spellings?)
I’ve used the conservative figure of 250,000 as quoted by the Oxford English Dictionary, which suggests that there is, at the very least, that number of words – if technical and regional vocabulary is excluded:
http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/how-many-words-are-there-in-the-english-language
Of course, it is more than reasonable to argue there are many more words in English – which makes it all the more frustrating when you can’t find the perfect one!
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